| From: | Sam Jordan |
| Date: | 03 Dec 99 at 18:16:52 |
| Subject: | Re: [warpup] Re: Test |
Am 03-Dez-99 schrieb nexus@studcs.uni-sb.de:
>> Yes. I still hope that H&P can resolve things with M@tabox. A third PPC
>> Kernel would be definitely crazy... and two PPC G3 Boards incompatible to
>> each other (M@tabox,Escena) even more....
>Somewhere I read that met@box wrote their own 68k emulation (so it ist the
I doubt that they already wrote one.
>3rd 68k emulation! - phase5,H&P, met@box - why didn't the work together?)
As H&P's blackbox emulation was basically ready in summer 1998 that's indeed
an interesting question.
>and that they have trouble with H&P because of licencing WarpUP. So if
Not licensing WarpUP, licensing the complete Blackbox emulation software,
which is a hell more than just WarpUP. It's indeed an operating software,
which is absolutely required to run such boards.
>there isn't an agreement between H&P and Met@box in near future than there
>WILL be a third ppc kernel.
I hightly doubt that they are capable to do this.
>Met@box announced that the G3-Boards will be out in january. So we will see.
Probably an equivalent release date to Phase5's september/october release.
>I can't understand that collaboration with H&P causes so much trouble. First
>phase5, now Met@box ...
You got something wrong. It's not a question of collaboration. H&P simply
offers its operating software to every hardware manufacturer, and the price
has been kept at a low level, because there is no piracy risk involved
when shipping the operating software with the hardware. It would in no way
result into a significant price increase of the hardware.
So if a hardware manufacturer thinks that it doesn't need an operating
software, then it's not H&P's fault. Please also differentiate between
all those companies:
- Phase5 has first announced to build hardware, leave software development
and let H&P do the software (very reasonable decision) just to cancel
all this in favor of their QNX stuff later. So the idea of 'one solution
for all hardware' seems not be attractive to them.
- Metabox (resp. the AmiJoe developers) have from my personal point of view
right now absolutly no clue concerning PPC software development. They have
just recently started to ask some very basic questions to PPC developers
about general PowerPC development, WarpUp and hunk format. Their knowledge
about these issues is probably approx. zero right now. It looks as they
live in some illusionary world, by saying 'let's do the hardware first, and
let's don't care about the software at all, and afterwards we will surely
find some easy way to do the software stuff'. Writing something equivalent
to H&P's blackbox emulation software requires a very deep knowledge about
PowerPC programming and it requires really much time, and I know this
of personal experience. Just writing an 68k emulator is quite a trivial
thing, but a full concept with PPC kernel and emulator is something of
a completely different complexity. Just run the emulator directly on the
hardware and do PPC calls using emulator traps is the complete nonsense,
because for every PPC call the emulator (and AOS) would be completely
halted, additionally on PPC side there would be no multitasking at all.
Current PowerPC software would in no way work in such a configuration.
A kernel *is* required as bottom layer for the emulation software.
These talks about the 'replacement of OS functions' is the greatest nonsense
I have heard for months, must be a marketing gag.
Finally there is no point in just doing the exactly same thing as H&P did,
which is BTW the only reasonable approach to solve the PPC-only hardware
problem (asides of running AOS in an emulator application under a foreign OS).
- Escena, nobody knows if and when something will happen. But these people
at least are the only ones, which are sane enough not to mess-up the whole
software stuff, by simply concentrating on hardware development. That's
what hardware developers should do.
So as a summary I don't expect anything to happen in a reasonable amount
of time, therefore such discussions right now have not much point. There
is not much else to do then wait and see.
bye